The creators of blended plastic materials, known in the industry as converters, typically purchase single component incoming material streams directly from resin suppliers, with little or no testing of the incoming raw materials. Converters generally assume that the incoming materials meet or exceed the physical properties of the product and process requirements. In some cases, the incoming materials will vary in one or more critical physical properties creating a hardship for the converter. Such materials may be returned to the supplier or reduced in price as a concession and blended into a finished product formulation at low concentrations so as not to materially affect the required physical properties or processing of the finished product.
It is also common practice today that many converters use wide specification, recycled post-industrial, recycled post-consumer and/or reprocessed resins in the production of numerous products. Traditionally, the use of post-industrial recycled resins, and to a greater extent recycled post-consumer resins, has been limited to non-critical applications or used at relatively low percentages due to the degradation of blended material properties or processing of the finished product. Low percentages of previously used materials included in the finished compound or reduced quality have been the norm due to a limited understanding of how to blend two or more materials together to alter the finished blend to meet the desired physical properties and not reduce processing efficiencies. The technology embodied in this invention may permit the converter to use up to 100% recycled post-consumer, wide specification, recycled and/or reprocessed resins or any combination aforementioned while achieving the desired finished product physical properties and processing characteristics.
A need presently exists in the industry for a method and system which optimize the physical properties of finished plastic products in relation to cost. Typically, the objective of blending two or more materials together is to achieve the desired properties of one polymer, for example, combined with the desired properties of a second polymer and so on. Rather than synthesizing a new polymer with all the desired properties, two or more polymers may be identified and mixed together to form a finished new blend that will have all of the desired properties, at the molecular level. The objective remains to produce the highest quality product at desire physical properties and maintain or improve processability, at the least cost. Current technology does not provide for a method to determine a relative value of a component in relation to one's physical properties within a blend or database.